


Phil Coulson: RA Extraordinaire

by CharacteristicallyMinor



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: College, Dorms, Gen, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 20:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6254545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacteristicallyMinor/pseuds/CharacteristicallyMinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it was decided that the Avengers needed an RA, Phil Coulson was the natural choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

"For the last time, I'm not your RA!" Pepper shouted at Tony before storming off.

Rhodey noticed the commotion and came over to where Tony was standing, looking slightly offended.

"What did you do to her this time?" he asked. 

"Well, my old RA had free condoms for the people on our floor, and I was curious if she could hook me up with some," Tony explained. 

"What use do you have for condoms?" Rhodey ribbed Tony. "It's not like there's anyone lining up to hook up with you."

"I'll have you know that there are dozens of supermodels that would be just delighted to hook up with the heir to Stark Industries," Tony retorted. "And I'm about to win Natasha over, just you wait."

"Dude, your infatuation with her is kind of getting creepy," Rhodey told Tony. "Anyways, I'm pretty sure we don't have an RA. Pepper doesn't live on our floor, so she's not ours."

"Well that just seems wrong. Who's going to force us to participate in bonding activities and give out condoms and candy?" Tony said. "I'm going to complain to Fury."

Rhodey considered the idea of an RA. It might be nice to have someone to go to with noise complaints, given that Tony's battle with Loki over who could be the most annoying neighbor was getting heated. 

"Let me do it; Fury likes me better. Plus, my old RA interned at SHIELD over the summer, and I bet I can get him on my side. He's a sucker for superhero stuff," Rhodey said.

"Perfect!" Tony said. "He'll be so in awe of me that I'll be able to get away with everything."

Rhodey stifled a laugh at how wrong Tony was as he walked away.

* * *

Sure enough, Rhodey's plan worked. A few days later, his old RA came to the academy.

"Phil! Nice to see you again, man!" Rhodey said.

"Good to see you too, Jim," Phil said. Before they could continue the conversation, Tony came up.

"You're the new RA? You seem a bit boring, but not bad for someone who's worked with SHIELD before," Tony said, straddling the line between insulting Phil and complimenting him. "Not to worry, being around us will cure you of that. I know you're probably pretty nervous about working with such big heroes such as myself, but trust me, I put my suit on one boot at a time just like everyone else."

"Oh, I can't say I'm nervous, Mr. Stark. Trust me, your reputation for being a lot of talk precedes you," Phil said. "Now, if you're nervous about hanging out with the other heroes, I'd suggest you go practice your aim. I've noticed your aim with your left hand leaves something to be desired."

Phil left while Tony spluttered about how he'd only just added a left-handed gauntlet to his armor, and he'd have the kinks worked out in a few days.

Rhodey laughed at Tony's expression. There was a reason Phil had been his favorite RA.


	2. Mind Control

"So, you're the new Resident Assistant. I like a man in power. Why don't you impress me by telling me everything you know about the timefog?" Enchantress requested sweetly.

"I'd rather not," Phil replied. "And it's generally considered bad form to attempt to mind control your allies. Breeds resentment and that sort of thing."

Enchantress asked, more intensely this time. "Wouldn't you like to just tell me everything you know? I'd be oh so grateful."

"My answer's unchanged," Phil said. 

"How are you resisting me?" Enchantress demanded, enraged.

"Maybe I'm born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline," Phil answered and walked away. 

Sam generally made it a habit to avoid Enchantress whenever possible; he hated not being in control of his own mind. But he'd been distracted watching Phil block her mind control, and he forgot to leave immediately after.

"You there! Falcon! Come over here," Enchantress told him, and suddenly all he wanted to do was to come to Enchantress's side. He forgot all about his desire to block her commands. Following them felt so good.

"What's this Maybelline that our new Resident Assistant speaks of? Is it a form of Midgardian magic?" Enchantress asked.

"It's a makeup brand. Phil was referencing a commercial advertising the makeup," Sam told her. "It was a joke, unless somehow he was wearing magic mascara. And I definitely would have noticed that."

Enchantress huffed, and Sam was suddenly hit with the urge to hurt the man who'd made her unhappy.

"Would you like me to go after Phil?" Sam offered.

Enchantress considered for a moment. "Best not to," she said regretfully. "I must go study Midgardian brain chemistry to discover the roots of his abilities. Now shoo."

Once Sam had fully recovered his wits, he went to find Phil. 

Phil was working in the SHIELD HQ when Sam found him. When Sam came up to him, Phil took a defensive stance.

"What do you think of Enchantress?" Phil asked.

"I kind of hate her," Sam admitted.

Phil relaxed. "Sorry about that," he said. "I figure that she's going to try to get back at me for resisting her. I assume that asking whether you were under her control would be futile, but you wouldn't be able to say negative things about her while under her power."

"That's smart," Sam said. "I actually wanted to talk to you about her. How were you able to avoid being put under her control?"

"I'm pretty sure it's because I'm not attracted to women, although that would have to be tested further," Phil told him. "I'm sorry that it isn't something that'll help you."

"Thanks for letting me know," Sam said, disappointed. "Wait, does that mean that her powers are due to attraction and not gender? That could cause problems if she figures it out. I don't think all of the girls on campus are straight."

"Shit, you're right," Phil swore, suddenly looking worried. "I've been assuming it's only males who are attracted to women, but it might be anyone who's into women. Sam, whatever you do, don't tell her that. And try to keep her busy tonight; a group of friends from my old college's Pride are coming to visit me, and I don't want her trying to test that theory on them."

Sam tried to avoid Enchantress, but then Fury gave him a mission with her, and she got the story out of him. When the mission ended, Enchantress sent Sam to play pool for four hours in order to keep him from interfering. 

When Sam finally finished playing pool and was released from Enchantress's control, it was too late. Sam rushed to find Phil so that he could apologize.

Instead, he saw Enchantress from across the quad. She was obviously furious. Sam felt a rush of relief; maybe Phil was right, and Enchantress could only affect men who were attracted to women. 

Sam decided to still go and find Phil. Even if he hadn't accidentally helped Enchantress discover another demographic she could control, he could have, and that was worth apologizing for.

He found Phil talking with his friends by the gate. As Sam approached to apologize, he couldn't help but overhear some of the conversation.

"-for the help," Phil said.

"No problem," one of the women replied. "If I'm going to have to deal with yet another person erasing my identity and disregarding the fact that Pride's not just made of gays and lesbians, I'm glad that this time it's going to work to protect people from mind control." 

Sam carefully refrained from analyzing this comment. If he walked away feeling lucky that Phil was on their side, it was solely due to how quickly Phil had accepted Sam's apology and completely unrelated to any manipulation abilities Phil may or may not have had.


	3. Popcorn

The fire alarm was going off for the fifth time this week.

Tony joined the group of students trailing out of the dorm. At first, some of his classmates hadn't been willing to evacuate when the alarm went off. That had stopped when Pepper had shown that she was very willing to make the alarm increasingly louder until everyone had left the building. At that point, it was easier to just evacuate.

Now, Tony wasn't opposed to setting the fire alarm off on an ideological level. He was very much in favor of creating the types of explosions or fires that led to the alarm going off; he would rather not have to deal with the alarm at all, of course, but Phil was scarily good at knowing when he'd disabled the fire alarms.

But the issue was that, unlike two of the last three times the fire alarm had gone off, he wasn't the cause of it. And that offended Tony on a personal level. He felt very strongly that if anyone was going to force the whole dorm to go stand outside at midnight, it should be him. But since it wasn't, Tony decided to go yell at the one who'd been responsible for the third time this week, and was almost definitely responsible for the alarm going off this week.

Loki was standing on the sidewalk in front of the dorm, looking extremely cross. As if this whole mess wasn't his fault.

"Look, you're becoming unoriginal. Setting off the fire alarm twice in one week? Once was a good prank, twice is just tedious," Tony said to him without preamble. "I thought you were more creative than that."

"You think I'm the one who set it off, Armor-Man?" Loki scoffed. "I don't know why you're trying to distract the attention from yourself, since you didn't try to hide the fact that you were responsible for two of the fire alarms this week. Don't even bother; everyone knows that this is your fault."

"Dude, if I was responsible, I wouldn't bother trying to hide it," Tony said. "So, if it wasn't me, and it wasn't you, who did it?"

Ten minutes later, Phil approached the group of students.

"I'm glad to see that you all managed to evacuate the dorm. I'd praise you, but this is something that the average kindergartner has mastered," Phil said. "You may all return to your dorms."

"Who caused the fire?" Tony asked, curious.

"Someone on the girls' floor tried to make popcorn in the microwave and burnt it," Phil said. "We don't know who, but we honestly don't care that much as long as they don't do it again."

Tony surveyed the girls, trying to decide which one of them had done it. He was pretty sure that Jan had made microwave popcorn a thousand times, so he doubted it was her. Natasha didn't seem the type to make microwave popcorn, and she was too good at everything that she tried to mess this up. Jessica seemed more likely to eat popcorn, but he was pretty sure she also had the super competent thing going on as a result of being a spy. And while Tony was pretty sure that Enchantress had zero experience using a microwave, he also thought that she'd probably just use her magic to pop the popcorn if she wanted it.

The students trickled back into the dorm. Tony was at the end of the line on the stairs, since he'd been too distracted considering who the culprit could be to notice that everyone was going inside. 

He was too busy puzzling over the culprit, in fact, that he didn't notice Phil discretely taking Jessica aside and giving her a crash course in how to use the microwave now that she was no longer living on Hydra rations.


	4. Floor Meeting

The thing was, when Jan had heard that they were getting an RA, she hadn't really taken him seriously. She'd thought he was there as Fury's agent, not as an actual RA.

Then Sam had gone to Phil to complain about the battle Tony and Loki had been having over who could be the most annoying neighbor. Jan had been certain that complaining would be pointless.

But Phil convinced Loki that it would be much more effective if Tony was the only one who could hear the noise coming from Loki's room; that way, Tony would know that the noise was specifically designed to bother him, and that no one else was having issues. Loki had taken to the idea. A few days later, Phil had mentioned to Tony that his noisemaking was much clumsier compared to Loki's, and suddenly Tony had become very interested in soundproofing his and Loki's rooms so that the only one who could hear noise coming from Tony's room was Loki.

Since Jan lived in the room below Tony's, that basically meant that Phil was her new favorite person. After that, she started thinking of Phil as a real RA.

That meant that when he called a floor meeting, Jan actually took note of the time and went. When she got there, she saw Natasha, Jess, Sam, Steve, Rhodey, and Kamala- apparently, Tony, Loki, and Enchantress had decided against coming.

"All right. I'd suspected that floor meeting attendance was going to be an issue. So I have a deal for you. I'm going to send Steve and Rhodey after Tony; Jan and Sam, you're going after Loki; and Natasha and Jessica are in charge of retrieving Enchantress. Whichever team gets back first with their target gets three free hours tomorrow. I've already cleared it with Director Fury and the teachers," Phil told them. "No physical violence and no attempting to sabotage other teams."

The Avengers looked at each other for a minute, clearly surprised, until the spell broke and they all scrambled out the door. 

Jan and Sam rushed to the club, hastily conferring on strategy as they ran. Sure enough, Loki was dancing at the club when he arrived. He really was predictable.

"Did you know that there's a floor meeting currently going on?" Jan asked Loki.

"Why should I care?" Loki asked. "If Agent-Man wants to hold a meeting, that's of no interest to me."

"You should care because Tony and Enchantress also failed to show up. Phil sent us out in teams to retrieve you, and he's made it a competition. You wouldn't want to miss the chance to beat Tony and Enchantress, now would you?" Sam asked.

"Not to mention, you're well on your way to being Phil's favorite of you three. He hates Enchantress, and he likes that you were the first one to restrict you and Tony's noise level competition to just the two of you," Jan added. "Winning the competition would solidify his preference for you in his mind, and it's always useful to have an authority figure on your side."

Sure enough, that convinced Loki. The trio headed towards the dorms, eager to win.

Jan, Sam, and Loki ran into the common room together. When they saw that they were the first team back, they high-fived each other triumphantly.

"Ha! I have beaten Armor-Man and Enchantress!" Loki exclaimed triumphantly.

"Nice job," Phil told the team. Loki looked pleased, and Sam was grinning. Jan was pretty sure she was, too.

Natasha, Jess, and Enchantress were the next ones back. When they saw that they weren't the first group, Natasha and Jess looked mildly upset. 

It took Steve and Rhodey another ten minutes to retrieve Tony.

"What happened?" Phil asked them, his voice level.

"I told him that he need to come to the meeting, but he ignored me. When I insisted, he flew off. Rhodey chased him, but it took him a while to catch him. After that, it wasn't hard to convince him it would be easier to come to the meeting," Steve said.

"Next time, appeal to his competitiveness," Sam suggested.

"Or use a mix of persuasion and bribery," Natasha added. Jan wondered what they'd bribed Enchantress with. Help on a scheme, maybe, or first priority access to the lab?

"Both excellent suggestions," Phil said. "Now, I've called you here for this meeting mostly to tell you about a new program. I'm instituting a weekly good neighbor training meeting. Anyone who is deemed in need of training will go through a three-hour workshop to learn about things like consent and respect. Infractions that will land you a slot at the workshop include malicious use of powers towards fellow students, including mind control and physical violence, and sexual harassment or assault, including verbal harassment. You've already seen what will happen if you attempt to skip a workshop that you've been ordered to attend. Reporting infractions is anonymous, and I highly encourage a bystander reporting system. All reports will be checked for veracity, of course."

Jan could hardly believe that someone was actually doing something to make her classmates be nice to each other. She'd eventually just accepted Enchantress's frequent use of mind control, Tony's relentless pursuit of Natasha despite her rejection of him, Loki and Natasha's constant manipulation of everyone, and other such offenses as just normal hazards of living among superheroes. She'd like it if things changed, though, and she wouldn't mind the opportunity to get a few hours of free time in the process.

"Now, a few other orders of business," Phil said. "I have posted clear instructions above the microwave about how to make microwave popcorn without setting off the fire alarm. I've put a bin on each floor to be used as a lost and found; any shower caps, undergarments, paper towels full of loose change, shower caddies, towels, and hangers found loose in the halls, common areas, and bathrooms can be placed in them. There is also a lost and found in the laundry room; any laundry left for more than ten minutes after the machine ends can be placed in it. I've asked Tony to install timers that will start counting up once the machines end, so that you know when the laundry is officially deemed abandoned."

Jan was pretty confident that Phil's list of lost items was completely based in reality, flashing back to the time she'd found a black thong in the hall. 

"Quiet hours are from midnight to eight every night. If you need to be up later than that, contact Tony or Loki for soundproofing, or else talk to me about special accommodations. I don't actually care when you go to bed, I just care that you allow others to sleep," Phil said. "Any other concerns you'd like to raise?'

The group was silent for a minute. Finally, Sam spoke up.

"Could whoever's been leaving noodles in the water fountain stop doing that? It's weird," Sam asked.

"If anyone needs lessons on how to make microwave noodles without spilling any, I'd be happy to help," Phil said. Jan was pretty sure he was silently lamenting their incompetence. Jan couldn't really blame him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for the list of lost items and the noodles in the water fountain goes to my dorm floor. Just because we're all Honors students doesn't mean we're competent in other areas of life.


	5. Kamala

Tony wasn't sure what he thought about the new RA. On one hand, Phil was clearly a fun ruiner. He kept making Tony go through the good neighbor seminar from hell, and he wasn't charmed by Tony's endearing personality. But on the other hand, Tony felt a lot better now that Phil was working to restrict Enchantress's powers. It was kind of weird that Phil cared, since he was immune and none of the adults cared if Enchantress mind controlled her classmates, but Tony wasn't going to knock it. Tony hated mind control more than anything.

That didn't mean that Phil wasn't the most boring person known to man. Phil's only real sign of personality was his crush on Steve. Almost every time Steve spoke to Phil, Phil's ears would go red and he'd become incredibly awkward. It was pretty hilarious seeing how dorky Phil was, but Tony didn't tease him much about it. Everyone had a crush on Steve. Besides, after a few weeks in Steve's presence, Phil was able to treat him more or less normally.

Then, Kamala came. That's when Phil got weird. Phil seemed to be trying to avoid Kamala, but he hung on to her every word when she was around. Phil talked about her like she hung the moon. At first, Tony wondered if Phil had a crush on Kamala. Phil had said he was gay, but this wasn't much different from how he was acting around Steve.

Eventually, though, Tony had a breakthrough. Phil's behavior towards Kamala was much more like hero worship than like a crush. This was how he'd acted around Steve when he first met Steve, which was when Phil's feelings towards Steve were much more on the hero worship side of things.

"JARVIS?" Tony asked. "Does Phil have a fanfiction account?"

"It appears that he does. He posts in a mixture of fandoms. Captain America RPF seemed to be one of his favorites, but he hasn't posted anything new there since coming to the Academy," JARVIS said.

"Has he bookmarked anything by Kamala?" Tony asked.

"He has bookmarked twenty three stories by Ms. Khan," JARVIS replied.

"Huh," Tony said. "Orchestrate it so that Kamala has one of his fics recommended to her. Whichever one best suits her reading preferences."

"I will do that right away," JARVIS said.

After a minute of thought, Tony asked, "What's Phil's username?"

JARVIS replied, "CreamCheesePlease."

"Huh," Tony said. "The guy must really like bagels. JARVIS, make note of that the next time I need to bribe him for something."

It took Phil months to figure out why Tony kept giving him bagel baskets.


End file.
